...As a stark contrast, this concept of celebrating powerful women in “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale” is almost invisible in the BBC cartoon. Throughout the cartoon, women are continually painted in a negative light—starting off with the Wife of Bath flirting with the Friar (BBC 0:25), as previously mentioned. The aggression and drama surrounding the tale only pertain to the female characters, making them seem as if they are crazy; it severely delegitimizes their actions and attitudes. The old woman who eventually marries the knight is relentlessly made fun of—one scene in particular shows her face up close licking her lips, telling the knight “I want to be your wife and your love!” (BBC 4:43) while his face is utterly disgusted. This depicts...
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...Canterbury Tales The Canterbury Tales written by Geoffrey Chaucer is a book filled with tales and prologues during the late medieval time period. Chaucer was born in 1342 in Paris. Chaucer lived the majority of his life privileged and on the kings’ (Richard II until 1399 then Henry IV) payroll. Chaucer began writing The Canterbury Tales in 1387, and worked on it throughout the 90’s. Of the few tales that I read (“The Prologue”, “The Miler’s Prologue”, “The Miller’s Tale”, “The Wife of Bath’s Tale Prologue”, and “The Wife of Bath’s Tale”), it seems clear that love and marriage are underlying themes throughout. But, love and marriage are two separate things during this time period. What the characters perceive to be love is actually lust. This will become evident throughout the tales. “The Prologue” is where Chaucer introduces all of the characters that will be prevalent throughout The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer describes the season as being April, and goes into detail about each character. It should be noted that the 29 characters that Chaucer mentioned were brought together by chance and did not plan this meeting. Each character had stopped at Tabard Inn, while waiting to embark on the pilgrimage to Canterbury. The night before the pilgrimage was to begin, the host offered a proposition to the pilgrims. He suggested a simple task: Now listen for your good, And please don’t treat my notion with disdain. This is the point. I’ll make it short and plain. Each one...
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...Part of the reason why The Canterbury Tales as a collection is so memorable is because of its dramatic nature. Some tales create drama through their plots, others create drama through various interjections and responses, and some create drama through their build up. Specifically, in regards to “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale”, the drama stems from the Wife of Bath as a character, and not as much from the tale itself. As a character, it is obvious that the Wife of Bath is a fierce woman with an I-don’t-give-a-shit type of attitude. She does what she wants and knows how to get her way: “And have this tribulacioun withal upon his flessh, whyl that I am his wyf. I have the power duringe al my lyf upon his proper body, and nought he.” (Chaucer...
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...Themes in Canterbury Tales Throughout an author’s literature, many times we find common themes; this is definitely true in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. The reader can find common themes through many of the tales. In the Wife of Bath tale, The Miller’s tale, and the Pardoner’s tale, it is easy to see that one of the main themes through the book is that women are the downfall of men. In the tale of The Wife of Bath, the reader sees the main theme in Chaucer’s work. In The Wife of Bath’s prologue, she tells a story about a night when she and one of her husbands spent a night at home. Her husband would read to her from a book. On this particular night, the Wife of Bath was subjected to more of this book, and the reader is told of how the book explains that women are men’s downfall. The Miller’s Tale is another that supports the theme. The Miller’s Tale speaks of a man who is totally devoted to an unfaithful wife. In the tale this beautiful woman is having an affair with a friend of her husband. To have some time alone they made a plan to get him away. They tell her devoted and gullible husband that there will be a flood like Noah’s, and to make boats to save them. In an attempt to save his wife, the husband goes to the roof and makes the boats. He died, and again, the actions of an unfaithful wife lead to the death of an innocently man. In the Pardoner’s Tale, a male traveler, the characters in his tale give examples as to why women are the downfall of men. The characters...
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...In Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales are many stories diverse in topic and style. Among these stories told by twenty nine persons, is created an interesting interpersonal dynamic. Chaucer removes them all from their social circumstances and classes and levels the plane by placing all of the characters that tell the tales on a religious pilgrimage to Canterbury, England. Chaucer used this journey as a device to bring together his fictional persons from wide-ranging backgrounds and have them share a portion of their life through the telling of a tale. The entirety of the work involves the personal concerns and outcomes of individuals in an ever changing medieval culture. The pilgrimage provided an opportunity for Chaucer to negate the barriers of class and social propriety in order to include diversity in the tales. Each tale is told individually. Each character is detailed with well developed personalities and specified occupations, clothing and social standing and in each tale; Chaucer relays the changes going on about him in Medieval England on a person by person basis. While The Canterbury Tales are relayed light heartedly, creating a caricature of medieval individuals and situations, Chaucer respected the religious doctrine of the time. The very fact that the characters of The Canterbury Tales are going on a religious pilgrimage tells of the ever increasing role of Christianity in Medieval society. While Christianity was becoming more accepted in the Anglo-Saxon period, its...
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...in schools, or are they unacceptable for the school environment? This question can be interpreted in two very opposite ways. The question can either be taken from the perspective that parents have the final say in what their kids learn or it can be taken from the perspective that the school curriculum and the school system knows what is best for the child's learning experience. Schools need permission from parents in order to show any book no matter how old or outdated the provocative information may be. Many parents believe that literature in schools today should be censored by them. Permission slips are sometimes given out when one may be...
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...The Wife of Bath is perhaps the most remarkable figure in The Canterbury Tales. Particularly interesting is the difference between her Prologue, in which she brashly and lustily gives the details of her five marriages, and her Tale, which is both moral and quite charming. Address the difference between the Wife's Prologue and her Tale. How do the two relate and lend meaning to one another? The Wife of Bath ha the longest prologue in The Canterbury Tales. Why does she feel the need to share this personal information with the pilgrims before she begins her tale? The Wife's prologue is unique in that it is longer than the tale itself. The Wife of Bath uses the prologue to explain the basis of her theories about experience versus authority and to introduce the point that she illustrates in her tale: The thing women most desire is complete control ("sovereignty") over their husbands. The Wife speaks on behalf of women everywhere discusses her five marriages and her tactics for gaining power and financial independence through the use of her body. Bawdy, lusty, and strong willed, she refuses to allow men to control her existence and she takes measures to shape her own destiny The Wife’s narrative opens with a defense of her many marriages, all legal, as she points out, i.e. recognized by the Church even though some churchmen frowned on widows re-marrying. The Wife challenges anyone to show her where the Scripture sets a limit to the number of successive legal marriages a...
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...There are many different sins presented in The Canterbury Tales, such as pride, greed, sloth, anger, gluttony, lust, and envy. The wife of Bath was prideful and was bragging about her power over her husband. The Friar was greedy when he took money from many people. The wife of Bath committed lust when she had many lovers other than her husband. The Wife of Bath was angered when she had to compete with books for her husband's attention. She then got back at him through her anger and made herself feel triumphant. Sloth was presented in the story when the Monk decided to do other things instead of what he was supposed to do. Gluttony was presented in the story when the Wife of Bath was always greedful. Envy was presented when the Wife of Bath...
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...MINISTRY OF EDUCATION, SCIENCE, YOUTH AND SPORT OF UKRAINE IVAN FRANKO NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF LVIV THE FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES LINGUISTIC MEANS OF POTRAYING MAIN CHARACTERS IN “THE CANTERBURY TALES” BY GEOFFREY CHAUCER COURSE PAPER PRESENTED BY LILIA YAREMA a fourth year student of the English department SUPERVISED BY SPODARYK O. V. an assistant professor of the English department LVIV 2012 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………… 3-4 CHAPTER I. THEORETICAL ISSUES IN LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS…… 5-16 1.1 Linguistic analysis……………………………………………… 5-8 1.2 Discourse and Text analyses….…………….………………….. 9-11 1.3 Stylistic analysis ………………………………………………… 12-16 CHAPTER II. LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF CHAUCER’S CHARACTERS 17-28 2.1 “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” ……………………………………… 18-22 2.2 “The Pardoner’s Tale” ………………………………………….. 23-28 CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………. 29-30 REFERENCES...… ………………………………………………………….. 31-32 INTRODUCTION The theme of the course paper is “Linguistic means of portraying main characters in “The Canterbury tales” by Geoffrey Chaucer”. This paper intends to make an analysis of the language in the collection of stories “The Canterbury Tales”, written by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of 14th century. We will analyze the language used to describe characters. It was based on the idea that every choice made by the author of a sentence is meaningful. Therefore, once we understand the choices...
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...emotions which he has not directly experienced. But he presents them in such a way that they seem personally experienced. Imagination is always associated with the created power and is a poetic principle. It is a transforming power as it has the ability to change the usual and ordinary in an unusual and uncommon way. Poetry is a modified "image of man and nature”. The poet is able to impart "the glory and freshness of a dream" to ordinary things of nature. He can present in his poetry the light that never was on land and sea. He is able to do so to the creative faculty of imagination. It is thus an active power. Poet is not a passive reflector of images formed from nature. He is a man who not only feels strongly but also thinks long and deeply. He is able to treat absent things as if they are present. Here Canterbury tales present an example of this imaginative power to visualize objects which are not present before poet’s eyes in their concrete forms but he presents them before us that they seem real. 29 pilgrims of Chaucer are his imaginative characters, all their qualities, merits and demerits are his own creations and here his creation is supported by his imagination. Imagination enables the poet to look deep into the heart and soul of things. It is through the imaginative faculty that he arrives at...
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...Bibliography: The Canterbury Tales Hansen, Elaine Tuttle. "The Wife of Bath and the Mark of Adam." Women's Studies 15.4 (1988): 399-416. JSTOR [JSTOR]. Web. 26 Oct. 2015. Hansen has two facets of her argument about The Wife of Bath from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. The first explains how important the Wife is to the feminist critic, while the second paradoxically argues that she can be looked at as antifeminist based on the fact that she is a speaker that in reality is the voice of a man. Her views are manipulated and characterized by a man, therefore they do not allow a true woman's voice to be heard. In part one of her argument she is in favor of the idea of the Wife of Bath...
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...TITLE · The Canterbury Tales AUTHOR · Geoffrey Chaucer TYPE OF WORK · Poetry (two tales are in prose: the Tale of Melibee and the Parson’s Tale) GENRES · Narrative collection of poems; character portraits; parody; estates satire; romance; fabliau LANGUAGE · Middle English TIME AND PLACE WRITTEN · Around 1386–1395, England DATE OF FIRST PUBLICATION · Sometime in the early fifteenth century PUBLISHER · Originally circulated in hand-copied manuscripts NARRATOR · The primary narrator is an anonymous, naïve member of the pilgrimage, who is not described. The other pilgrims narrate most of the tales. POINT OF VIEW · In the General Prologue, the narrator speaks in the first person, describing each of the pilgrims as they appeared to him. Though narrated by different pilgrims, each of the tales is told from an omniscient third-person point of view, providing the reader with the thoughts as well as actions of the characters. TONE · The Canterbury Tales incorporates an impressive range of attitudes toward life and literature. The tales are by turns satirical, elevated, pious, earthy, bawdy, and comical. The reader should not accept the naïve narrator’s point of view as Chaucer’s. TENSE · Past SETTING (TIME) · The late fourteenth century, after 1381 SETTING (PLACE) · The Tabard Inn; the road to Canterbury PROTAGONISTS · Each individual tale has protagonists, but Chaucer’s plan is to make none of his storytellers superior to others; it is an equal company. In the Knight’s Tale, the...
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...Tales’ summaries The Wife of Bath’s Tale starts with a Prologue in which she gives an account of her colorful life with five husbands. The tale continues the main question of women’s desire for sovereignty over men. A young Knight rapes a maiden while she was returning home. As a punishment for his heinous act he has to discover within a year what women most desire. The Knight was searching in the whole country in search of the answer. At the end he promises to grant a wish to an ugly old hag in return for the right answer. When he has given the answer in court and secured his liberty, the old hug jumps up and demands that he marries her. The Knight begs her to reconsider and wish for something else but the old hag stubbornly refuses. The Knight marries her secretly. At night as they lay in bed, the Knight keeps on turning restlessly. The old hag asks him if he would prefer her ugly and faithful or beautiful and faithless. The Knight allows her to decide. The old woman is delighted to have won ‘sovereignty’ over her husband and rewards him by becoming faithful and beautiful all the time. The Knight’s Tale describes how two kinsmen Arcite and Palamon fall in love with the same woman named Emily, whom they first see out of their prison window. Emily is the niece of King Theseus. Arcite gains his freedom but is banished from Athens. He comes back masked since he cannot bear to live away from Emily. In the meanwhile Palamon breaks out of prison and coincidentally meets Arcite...
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...Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales Image you lived in a world where living in the middle class made you a well respected citizen, well this is the world imagined in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. This was a world re-imagined taking the norm of knight and nobility being top class, and turning it around. This promoted peasant and middle class to rise up make something for themselves. The idea that a person in the middle class could afford to go on a pilgrimage like the one described in The Canterbury Tales. Some topics focused on are in the Canterbury Tales were; why is the rise of middle class so evident in Chaurcer’s tales, and what did the rising of the middle class look and consist of? How is the rise of the middle class evident in this tale, and where is the middle class in the tale from, and why is the rise of the middle class such a surprise and so significant. Many characteristics make up the medieval time period present in Chaucer’s tale, and what is the significance of this...
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...Role of Marriage in "The Wife of Bath" Canterbury Tales In most modern marriages today, both men and women contribute to the same relationship roles such as being the provider, communicator, negotiator and so on. In the 14th century, most marriages were arranged and the woman had to obey her husband’s commands. During this time, Geoffrey Chaucer's wrote The Canterbury Tales. His stories demonstrate a variety of attitudes toward the perceptions of marriage, with some of these ideas being extremely conservative while others are wildly liberal. While several of these tales are rather comical, Chaucer gives us a representation of his attitudes toward marriage at that time in history. When addressing the question of who has correctly identified the proper roles in marriage, it is The Wife of Bath, a tale that satirically demonstrates the wife's overall desire for mastery within the marriage by her manipulation of the husband's weaknesses of both the flesh and the mind. It is these peculiarities of the Wife of Bath's tale that uniquely answer the question of who deserves the mastery in marriage. The Wife of Bath's prologue introduces the pilgrim who narrates this tale, Alison, a gap toothed, partially deaf seamstress and widower of five husbands, claiming to have great experience in the ways of the heart by remedying whatever might ail it. Alison, unlike the other tales in comparison, describes marriage as a miserable experience. The Wife of Bath's tale sets itself apart by presenting...
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